Chapter 39 A Smile Across Time and Space

On the first day after the National Day holiday in 2019, Bai Yang returned to school to take the first monthly exam of the semester.

The first test is Chinese as usual.

When the bell rang, the invigilator walked into the classroom with the test papers and opened them on the podium.

"Now we are going to start the exam. Please don't whisper to each other or look around. If you have a cell phone, please put it on the podium."

Bai Yang sat in his seat, holding a black gel pen in his hand. He slowly pushed the pen cap up with his thumb and let it fall down. Although he was in the examination room, he was absent-minded.

He was thinking about the time capsule.

Will the plan succeed?

Will the time capsule be found by BG4MSR?

The invigilator handed out the papers one by one along the aisle. She placed the Chinese test paper and answer sheet on Bai Yang's desk. Her slender and powerful fingers pressed lightly on the edge of the test paper to prevent it from being blown away by the wind, and then handed the test paper to the next student. Bai Yang was in a daze. He saw that there was white chalk dust on the teacher's fingertips and the test paper gave off a faint smell of ink.

All the candidates who received the test papers began to look at the questions, except Bai Yang who was still in a daze.

After handing out the papers, the teacher stepped onto the podium and cleared his throat as the bell rang:

"Students, you can start writing now!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the whole examination room was filled with the rustling sound of flipping papers. Bai Yang's wandering thoughts returned to his body. He subconsciously turned the gel pen over and began to look at the questions.

But the black characters on the test paper were printed on his retina, and then flew out from his head, and he couldn't catch them no matter how hard he tried. Bai Yang thought that he would definitely fail the test in this state. He tried to force himself to concentrate and read the title of the Chinese test paper several times, but he only remembered the phrases "Nanjing City", "Senior Year", and "Student Situation Survey".

Are there any other loopholes in your plan?

Will the time capsule be disturbed again?

These questions kept popping up in Bai Yang's mind, and he couldn't stop them. It was like playing whack-a-mole, when one problem got solved, another one popped up.

Yesterday afternoon, he asked Brother Yan to help take the capsule to Crescent Lake and hide it there. BG4MSR once said that Crescent Lake Park is still intact and the landform has not suffered large-scale damage, so the probability of hiding the stainless steel capsule in the lake for the next twenty years should be very high.

If this operation fails again, he will be really helpless.

With Bai Yang's ability as a mere ordinary high school student, no matter how perfect the plan is, it can only go so far.

Bai Yang tilted his head to look out the window. A row of pigeons were perched on the roof of the teaching building in the distance. The sky was blue and cloudless. What was that girl doing at this moment?

——The girl is running.

Banxia had never run so fast before. The ground seemed to be hot to her feet. She jumped up as soon as her toes touched the ground. After getting up and having breakfast, she ran all the way to Crescent Lake. She didn't even have time to change her clothes. She was still wearing a white nightgown. Since Crescent Lake was too far away and it was too unsafe to leave her residence at night, Banxia couldn't come here last night. She could only set off early the next morning.

The girl stopped breathlessly in front of the door of the ruins of the banquet hall of the Night Shanghai Hotel, bent down to wipe the sweat off her face, and picked off the grass leaves that were stuck to her hair and clothes.

Where is that capsule?

Banxia threw down her backpack, took off her shoes and went down into the lake. She didn't expect that BG4MXH would hide the time capsule here, under the ruins of the banquet hall of Night Shanghai Hotel. This was a bit beyond her expectations, because she was very familiar with this location, she often dug lotus roots and water chestnuts here.

Pillar.

The third pillar from the inside out!

The girl bent her knees and submerged her calves in the lake water, and slowly groped her way over.

In recent years, the water in Crescent Lake has been gradually drying up. Today's Crescent Lake is definitely shallower than it was twenty years ago. Banxia estimates that when BG4MXH buried the time capsule, the water under the platform of the banquet hall of Night Shanghai Hotel was deep enough to submerge his thighs, but now it is only below the knees.

Shallow water is a good thing.

There are many turtles in shallow water, so there is no shortage of food...

Pooh.

It is easier to find the capsule when the water is shallow.

Banxia buried both her hands in the mud, digging forward bit by bit, but she also had some doubts.

She was not unfamiliar with the waters around the banquet hall ruins. There were many lotus flowers and lotus pods here, and Pinellia often foraged here. She even had her own swimming spot on the shore.

But after so many visits, why has she never found the time capsule?

After feeling around under the designated pillar and digging very deep, the girl did not find the time capsule, so she moved on to other pillars, groping her way through, crawling under the platform, and feeling around one by one until Banxia became tired and her back ached. So she crawled out from the other side of the platform, straightened up, put her hands on her hips, and moved all the joints of her body.

The girl raised her hand to lift the hair by her ear, wiped the sweat from her cheek, and looked at the lake in front of her.

why is that?

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"The setting sun and the lone wild goose fly together, and the autumn water and the sky are the same color."

"The singing of the fishermen's boats in the evening reaches the end of the Pengli shore; the flocks of geese are startled by the cold, and their cries break off at the Hengyang harbor."

The ancient Chinese text tested was "Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng".

Bai Yang didn't think twice and forgot the word when he picked up the pen.

Finished.

How do you write the word “眄” which means to gaze at the sky from top to bottom?

The examination room was silent, with the occasional cough and the sound of flipping test papers. The Chinese language test had been going on for ninety minutes, with a total of two and a half hours of examination time. At this point, most people had finished answering the basic questions and were about to start working on the composition.

The composition topic for this Chinese language test is "The time when I accidentally fell asleep."

Bai Yang frowned.

He is not good at writing essays and he frowns every time he comes across this kind of material.

"On the way of growing up, maybe you take a nap occasionally and miss many wonderful things. What's more disappointing is that you didn't want to sleep, but just pretended to sleep, or just wanted to take a nap, but you actually fell asleep..."

Bai Yang read the composition materials silently. The rustling sound of the people writing quickly in the back and front seats made him a little nervous. In an exam, he is not afraid of time going by quickly, but he is afraid of others writing fast.

But when it comes to writing, the more anxious I am, the harder it is to write, just like constipation.

When will he be able to be as creative as the people in the front and back seats, with a burst of inspiration?

Bai Yang took a deep breath to calm himself down. He unconsciously drew an oval on the draft paper, and the tip of his pen kept moving along the existing handwriting. He stared at it, and the more he looked at it, the more it looked like a time capsule.

Time capsules are round.

——Yes, the time capsule is round.

Banxia stood in the water, pondering.

It is a capsule, which should be a round cylinder.

The girl fished in the lake for two hours and searched under every pillar of the restaurant's foundation. The silt she dug up was enough to build the Tower of Babel, and the remaining material was enough to build the Hoover Dam, but she still found nothing.

She fished out a lot of garbage, empty cans, broken glass bottles, big pebbles, everything, but no time capsule. Sometimes Banxia thought she had touched one, which was round, hard, and smooth, but when she fished it out, she found it was a skull that someone had thrown at the bottom of the lake.

Whose skull is thrown around?

The owner hasn't come to claim it after all these years.

Such a big heart.

She was covered in water and mud and stood in the knee-deep lake in a white dress, like a black-backed egret that had landed here, looking around.

Could it be that this plan also failed?

The sun was getting hotter and hotter. Banxia came out in a hurry and didn't bring an umbrella. If she continued to be exposed to the sun, she would get heatstroke and dehydration.

She decided to go ashore to rest and replenish water.

Take your time to look for it, you will definitely find it, there is still time.

Banxia comforted herself.

"It rained all night, so it's good weather to get up early."

The girl hummed a song softly and waded towards the shore step by step.

I was thinking as I walked - the time capsule was hidden under the base of the restaurant twenty years ago. It had been here twenty years ago. If it hadn't been taken away by someone else, how could I not find it?

I often come here to pick lotus roots, lotus pods and water chestnuts. If time capsules really exist, I should have discovered them long ago...

Banxia pulled aside the weeds along the shore, pulled one foot out of the underwater mud, and stepped onto the shore.

Have you ever seen that thing?

She put one foot on the shore and pulled the other foot out with force.

A round, swollen, black capsule?

"I dreamed of you again last night. We played happily..."

The girl was suddenly stunned.

"Have fun playing..."

"game……"

A round, swollen, black capsule!

That's a time capsule!

She found it.

It was as if lightning flashed through the girl's brain, and then her whole body began to tremble.

She had seen it before, she had seen it before! Last time when she was picking lotus roots, Banxia dug out a cylinder full of mud from the mud at the bottom of the lake, but she didn't know what it was at the time, so she just went to the shallows along the shore - no, no, she was sure that it was definitely not her first time to meet the time capsule. In the past many years, Banxia had passed by Crescent Lake hundreds of times, went into the water to pick lotus roots hundreds of times, and her hands groping in the mud had touched the capsule hundreds of times.

That time capsule was waiting for her long before Banxia knew BG4MXH.

We passed each other hundreds and thousands of times, just for the last encounter.

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"There are still ten minutes left before the end of the exam." The invigilator looked up at the clock on the wall and reminded, "Students who haven't finished answering the questions, hurry up."

Bai Yang was concentrating on writing his composition.

What the hell is this essay topic?

The time when you accidentally fell asleep?

Every time he took the Chinese language test, he had to rack his brains to piece together 800 words, which was as painful as constipation for Bai Yang. He counted the spaces left on the answer sheet almost word by word, wishing he could use an ellipsis as six words.

"In summary, time is precious to each of us. As the saying goes, there is no need to sleep for a long time when you are alive, because you will sleep forever after you die. We must cherish every second of our life..."

Oh my god, what am I writing about.

Bai Yang thought.

One of Bai's writing skills! Even if what you write is a mess, you must elevate the idea of ​​the composition.

Bai Yang reviewed the article he had written.

Not high enough.

This is not high enough, it needs to be higher!

"To count the heroes of the past, we still look to today. In today's world, hard work is the main theme. As contemporary youth, we must not sleep in, but work tirelessly to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation!"

No matter what you write, you must end it with "Strive unremittingly to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation!" For this sentence, the teacher will give you two extra points.

The bell rang for the end of get out of class.

The exam is over.

Bai Yang let out a long sigh, closed the pen cap, and waited for the teacher to take away the test paper and answer sheet.

He stared at the handwriting on the paper, and his heart suddenly moved. In all these years of Chinese language examinations, there has never been a time like today when he wanted to write something else after finishing the composition.

What does he want to write?

He wanted to write about how powerful time is, and what can resist the passage of time and the erosion of years? It is like hiding a capsule at the bottom of a lake, letting this fragile little paper boat drift in the surging river of time, going through hardships, and finally accurately docking in someone's hand.

On the cracked mudflat, the girl found the cylinder she had discarded.

The thing still lay quietly in the same place, wrapped in layers of plastic cloth soaked in mud. Banxia held it in her arms and used her fingers, dagger and teeth to remove the dry plastic cloth layer by layer, finally revealing a rusty metal capsule.

The girl's hands began to tremble so much that she could not hold the handle of the knife.

Banxia forced herself to calm down and used a knife to remove the rust on the bolt bit by bit.

After being soaked in water for more than 20 years, the capsule had long been rusted. The stainless steel used to make the time capsule could not withstand such a long time and harsh environment. It took Banxia a lot of effort to remove the first bolt.

There are eight bolts on the capsule lid. After unscrewing them all, Banxia can open the lid.

The Time Slow Mail, which has been sealed for twenty-one years, will see the light of day again.

The bolt was rotten, but fortunately the rubber sealing ring was still working, and no water had entered the capsule. The originally white rubber had long turned brown and would break into pieces if squeezed. Banxia poured out everything in the capsule, which included a bag of medicine, a small wooden photo frame, and a piece of letter paper.

Slightly yellowed letter paper.

Banxia spread out the letter paper on the grass, and the handwriting on the paper was still clear.

“Dear Ms. BG4MSR:

By the time you read this letter, I will be dead."

He is really dead.

Banxia knew that he was really dead.

“This is a letter from a deceased person. It has traveled through twenty years to reach your hands. When I wrote this letter, you might not have been born yet, and when you received it, I was no longer alive.

What does a person's world look like? A Confucius Temple, Xinjiekou, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics Affiliated High School and Yueya Lake Park without people, a Nanjing without people, then there would definitely be no college entrance examination, no math test papers, and no "Small Questions Crazy".

Besides, I would like to know how I died, and if you receive this letter, I hope you will tell me the cause of my death, and the cause of death of others, if you know it. "

I don't know how you died.

Even if I knew, I wouldn't necessarily tell you.

I will never tell you how you died.

I will never tell you how you died!

absolute……

I won’t tell you…

Why did you die?

Big drops of tears fell on the letter paper. Banxia touched her cheek subconsciously and found that her face was covered with tears. When did she start crying?

Why did you die?

"Of course, if the cause of my death is too tragic, I hope you will consider it and not tell me too bluntly, so as not to cause me too much mental pressure. Twenty years later, I will not even be forty years old. I feel deeply sorry when I think that the world will lose such a young and promising person."

Pooh!

The girl cried and then burst into laughter.

Bah! Bah! Bah! Bah! Bah!

"I wish you good health, never forget to bring an umbrella when it rains, and never eat ginger when eating braised chicken, 73."

Final signature:

"The BG4MXH who is communicating with you at this moment, who was in the past 20 years."

On the back of the slightly yellowed letter paper is a big smile.

(End of this chapter)